On this edition of Illinois Rising, Dan Proft and John Tillman, President & CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, discuss Chicago’s newest rules for rideshare drivers (Uber, Lyft etc), how the Mt. Sterling City Council voted against discontinuing water services to the Western ILL Correctional Center - which could affect more than 400 jobs - and more.

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Dan: Dan Proft, and joining me on this edition of
Illinois Rising is Illinois Policy Institute President CEO John Tillman and—
John: Hey, Dan, I’m just the CEO. We have a new president.
Dan: Oh, that’s right—
John: Remember?
Dan: I’ve gotten so used to it.
John: I know, I was waiting to see if you did that,
Kristina Rasmussen, our executive vice president is recently promoted to President
Chief Operating Officer, so I’m thrilled.
She’s been a great partner in this for all of us and—
Dan: Yeah, she hosted with me last week.
John: Oh, that’s right, I forgot that. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
John: So anyway I just want to get that out.
Dan: Oh, yes, okay, just CEO John Tillman.
John: I’m stripping titles left and right.
Dan: Yeah. That’s great, you could pare down titles.
John: Too many, too many.
Dan: Yeah, yeah.John: Father, CEO, that’s all I need.
Dan: Titles are over rated. In that order. So this week Chicago City Council made a move
to frankly do what Austin did; jeopardize the sharing economy from being visited
upon the community by a proposal from the 9th Ward Alderman, Anthony
Beale, that would require additional background checks and fingerprinting for
drivers that drive for Lyft and Uber.
Big problem, Uber and Lyft just fought this battle in Austin, Texas,
there was a referendum, they lost and they pulled out of Austin.
John: Right.
Dan: So they were serious, they’re not joking
around and there’s, of course, thousands of Chicagoans who at least make some
of their money by driving for Uber and Lyft.
John: Twenty thousand a month, Dan—
Dan: Twenty Thousand a month?
John: It’s a huge number, twenty thousand a month
drive for Uber or Lyft. It is about
8,000 a taxi medallion, so it gives you some idea of the scale of Uber and Lyft.
Dan: It also gives you some idea that the central
planners don’t necessarily know how to properly calibrate supply to demand.
John: Right, because the key part of this is that
the taxi industry is a cartel and it is controlled—and that cartel is enabled
by city government. The city of Chicago
creates the cartel by limiting the number of medallions that allow people to go
drive cabs, reducing supply, making it hard for people, particularly in poor
neighborhoods to get a cab. Because a
lot of those cabs won’t drive there because with such an over demand that they
can stay on the other neighborhoods and those particular poor neighborhoods are
poorly served. Uber and Lyft serve them
well.
Dan: And it’s kind of like the Airbnb campaign,
Airbnb also running into static from city hall and it’s here talking about
middle income people trying to deal with the high cost of living in the city of
Chicago and leverage their property for their ends the way the government likes
to leverage their property for the government’s ends with property taxes and
regulations, and so forth.
John: Right, right.
Dan: But in Chicago with respect to Uber in
particular, this is a little bit more delicate because Raum Emanuel’s brother,
Ari, is like a ground floor investor in Uber.
So we can’t lose Uber in Chicago because we don’t want the value of Ari Emanuel’s
stock options to go down. So there was a
bit of a compromise, no fingerprinting required but there are still new
regulations, including requiring Uber drivers to get a chauffeur’s license.
John: Right, a chauffeur’s license, a little less
onerous version of a chauffeur’s license but never the less onerous. You have to go online, you have to renew it
annually, you don’t have to get fingerprinted and all the other stuff but you
also can’t drive a car that’s older than six years old, unless you go through
some inspection regimen. You know, let’s
get down to what this really—
Dan: And by the way, that’s really interesting,
since I think the average age of cars on the road is about 11 years.
John: Right.
So think about who they’re blocking, they’re blocking people who are
struggling. They’re blocking people who
may not be able to afford a newer car from trying to lift themselves up. And this is what is so—
Dan: Pun intended.
John: Yeah [laugh], I wish I’d thought of that and
done it intentionally. Sometimes they
just flow like—
Dan: Yeah.
John: From osmosis.
Dan: Your lyrical verse.
John: Exactly. And so they’re blocking people who
might be struggling, looking for extra income, from rising. This is the perfect example of how regulation
stops people from rising and protects those who have the advantage.
Dan: Well, let’s take it from the abstract to the
concrete by talking to an actual Uber driver.
He is Jim Evans, he is a retiree who’s been driving for Uber, Jim,
thanks for joining us, appreciate it.
Jim: No problem, thank you.
Dan: So before we get into the regulatory scheme
that you must face as an Uber driver in Chicago, what was the impetus for you
to start driving for Uber in the first place?
Jim: Well, actually my daughter lives in San
Francisco, so I was firstly exposed to it out there and then when I came back
to Chicago I found that it was available.
And I’ve been driving for, I think I’m coming up to my third anniversary—
Dan: Congratulations.
Jim: I wanted a little extra income, thank you,
I think I have six to seven thousand rides in now. But I needed the little extra income, I’m
paying off my daughter’s student loans, got some other things in the works and I
just, you know, I needed the extra cash, I needed the flexibility because I’m
an actor.
Dan: Oh.
John: Oh.
Jim: And I’m a professional metal detectorist,
so—
John: No kidding, what an interesting man you are,
I’ve got to get in your car one of these days.
Metal detecting is a fun little hobby.
Jim: Alright [laughing].
John: I’m sure you’re a five-star driver. So when you heard that this was coming down,
how did it make you feel? You live in
the city, city resident, really they were treating you as—
Jim: Yeah, I live in the city—so I live and
actually I already have a chauffeur’s license because I anticipated that maybe
this would be—I’m saying back almost three years ago before I even signed up
for Uber, I got a chauffeur’s license. But, you know, it concerns me because, you
know, and I haven’t read all the new regulations. I kind of got an overview of
what they are, I’m not really sure—other than generate more money for the city,
I’m not really sure what the new regulations will do to help Uber drivers or
Uber riders to be very candid with you.
Dan: Well, the regulations aren’t intended to
help either groups, I don’t believe, they’re intended to placate the taxi
associations and cab drivers who don’t like the existence of Uber and Lyft it
seems to me.
Jim: Well, I think the reality of it is it’s not
necessarily just to placate the medallion owners and the taxi union, but it’s
actually to generate more money for the city.
Dan: Well, yeah.
Jim: They’re going to have us do supposedly an
online class, ok. I have some question;
I don’t even know that a lot of drivers actually have access to computers or if
they’re even computer literate. So that
may be a problem, but—
Dan: Maybe they can do that at the DMV too so I
don’t have to go to the DMV.
Jim: Yeah.
Well, I don’t know that it’s really the taxi drivers that have an issue
with Uber, I think it’s the medallion owners and the union.
John: Right, exactly.
Dan: Well, sure.
John: That’s exactly right.
Dan: Because the value of their medallions has
fallen because of the competition.
Jim: And they have empty cars because a lot of
cab drivers are now driving for Uber to make more money.
Dan: Right.
John: Well, that tells you the truth about the
whole arrangement, the irony of this is the medallion owners have essentially
been exploiting the taxi drivers for a very long time. And the evidence of that is what you said,
when taxi drivers leave that medallion cartel to ride for Uber because it’s a
better deal. Because everybody thinks
it’s always just about money, it’s not just money, it’s flexibility, it’s
controlling your schedule, dipping in when you want to work and dipping back
out when you want to do something else.
That’s one of the great things about Uber and Lyft.
Jim: Yeah, one of the things a lot of people
don’t realize, you know, when you get in a cab you usually get hassled about
oh, the credit card machine doesn’t work, well, number one, that’s against the
law. But the reality of it is the
medallion owner charges that taxi driver five percent for the privilege of
using the credit card machine, so even his own medallion owner is ripping him
off, that’s just too bad.
Dan: Yeah, that’s an interesting point. But on taxis as well though, it seems to
me—I’m an over-paid radio talk show host, so I take like service cars from the
building in which I live and sometimes they’ll complain, this is going to
change now, but they’ll complain, “I’ve got a chauffeur’s license, those Uber
drivers should have chauffeur’s licenses too.”
And I say, “Well, why does it always have to be in the direction of
punishing other people because you’re being punished right now, how about we
agree that there’s a level playing field but it’s a level playing field where
everybody is deregulated and nobody is being imposed upon by the city or the
state.” What about going in the other
direction?
John: Right.
Let’s Uberise everybody.
Dan: Yeah, right.
Jim: From what I gathered from what I’ve read
recently about the new ordinances that, you know, I guess they wouldn’t have to
have a physical and they wouldn’t have to have a drug test. But I have to tell you, to get a chauffeur’s
license almost cost annually almost $300 a year.
Dan: That’s real money.
Jim Yeah, and the people that drive two days a
week can’t afford to do that. I happen
to drive more than that but a lot people, Uber and actually the riders rely on
driver’s availability.
Dan: Yeah, that’s right. And that’s why Uber pulled out of Austin
because the waiting times were going to increase because they’re not going to
have the labor pool of part-time drivers.
John: Alright, Jim, let’s have a little fun. Do you have any fun stories of your favorite
passengers?
Jim: Well, as an actor I think it’s kind of an
interesting thing. So I’m an actor and
my second week on the job I had a producer from NBC—
Dan: Oh, big break.
Jim: One from ABC—
John: Wow.
Jim; One from Fox and a casting director from
Ogilvie, all in one week, and I thought, “I’m being paid to audition.”
John: That’s awesome.
Dan: [Laugh].
Jim: But just the other day, as an example; I
had an advertising couple in my car and I was talking to them about what they
do and he told me he was in advertising, so I gave him my card. Now, he’s from Ohio, so I took him to the
airport and I got out, and he said, “Oh, by the way, you do voiceover, right?” And I said, “Yeah,” he said, “Say this,” and
he told me something to say. And then he
said, “Well, you know, you’ll probably be hearing from me.” And I just got an email this week, asking me
to quote him a rate to do a voiceover for him in Ohio.
John: That’s fantastic, Jim, and that would never
happen in a cab.
Dan: Yeah, also too, Uber is the new waiting
tables to be discovered—
John: There you go.
Dan: Nice, Jim Evans—
Jim: That’s it.
Dan: Jim Evans, driver for Uber, thanks so
much—and actor—
John: Actor—
Dan: And voiceover—
Dan: Voiceover specialist.
Dan: Maybe we’ll generate some leads for you from
this appearance as well. Jim, thanks so
much for joining us appreciate it.
Jim: And don’t forget, I’m also a professional
metal detectorist.
John: Right.
Dan: Of course.
Jim: I’ve gotten jobs from that.
Dan: Alright, thanks, Jim, appreciate your time.
Jim: Thank you, have a great day. Thank you very much.
Dan: Dan Proft back with John Tillman, CEO of the
Illinois Policy Institute. I’m morning
show host with Amy Jacobson, Chicago’s Morning AM, so catch our act five to
nine am, Monday to Friday. John, Thomas Sowell,
one of the great thinkers of the last 50 years, and a great economist as well,
he makes a great point about how government works. And presents this question to think about,
this is how government manipulates people to spend money they don’t have. Think about this choice, if you were a member
of congress and you were faced with cutting funding for a statue to Benedict
Arnold, or cutting funding for children’s vaccinations, which would you
choose? And, of course, everybody says,
“Of course, children’s vaccinations are more important than Benedict
Arnold.” So you cut the funding for the
statue to Benedict Arnold, who was a traitor to our country, obviously. And so
says for people that think linearly and comment in a common sense fashion who
answer the question that way, you don’t understand how politics works and this
is why it’s so important. Because you’d
actually do is fund the statue for Benedict Arnold if you were going to be a
politician like how it actually works, you use the money you have to fund the
statue to Benedict Arnold and then you decry your political opponents for not
funding children’s vaccinations and you end up getting funding for both.
John: Right.
Dan: That’s actually how it works—
John: And keep winning elections.
Dan: Right.
And shaming your opponents for being ‘moral reprobates’, for being
unwilling to fund children’s vaccinations.
John: I’ve never heard that story, that’s a great
story. Have to read more Sowell.
Dan: Yeah, Sowell’s the best and he frames it
nicely and seems to me that’s a little bit of what we have going on with the
budget impasse in state government in Illinois.
And the public sector unions kind of doing the same game Sowell
describes with that example, that hypothetical.
And this played out this past week with the state’s attention turned on
Mount Sterling Illinois, not a place that usually draws a lot of statewide
attention. But there was a city council
vote as to whether or not to shut off water to the prison because the state is
in arrears to the prisons to pay their utility bills.
John: Right, their water bill, and so the vote was
whether or not to shut off the water and ironic as we’re about to here, is the AFSCME
member who works at that prison said, “Don’t do it now because you’ll get
crushed by doing it alone. Let’s
conspire with others and create crisis.”Audio Clip:
—you intend to pursue this shut off action,
everyone in our community and everyone in every other adversely affected
community, would benefit by you building a coalition. Danville, Decatur, Galesburg, Canton, Pitchfield,
Lincoln, Logan, Jacksonville, these are all small communities that are unsure
in the same place. If we fight this
alone, this is one of those losing battles.
You build a coalition and you go forward, if you—
Dan: Yeah and so to your point the idea—and we’re
talking about Western Illinois, the Western Illinois Correctional Center
here. Let’s get everybody together to
manufacture this crisis to put pressure on governor Rauner, specifically, to
cave and increase access and do what we want to continue life in Illinois as
we’ve come to enjoy it.
John: And there’s several parts to that that are
interesting. Number one is it’s a
conspiracy to extort, which is what it essentially is. And I think the truth of what their strategy
is revealed, they care more about AFSCME members than they do you and anybody
else in anyplace in the city. They care
more about their lives than they do somebody whose struggling and perhaps their
program is not getting funded or for somebody whose development disabled,
somebody who has autism, whatever you want to pick. Whatever the social services are that you
happen to like that aren’t getting funded right now, those are less important
than the AFSCME members, they’re at the front of the line. And then, most importantly I think about the
whole thing, is the way that the AFSCME leadership—I don’t think this guy wrote
these talking points—
Dan: Right.
John: They came down from On High, it’s a
coordinated effort. And notice who their
villain is, their villain is the governor, because that’s where the battle is,
the governor’s negotiating the new AFSCME contract on behalf of all the
taxpayers. Their villain is not Mike
Madigan who’s the one who actually failed to pass a budget, remember, it’s Madigan
who failed to pass a budget.
Dan: Not to mention, governor Rauner again, been
here 18 months, the state has 220 billion dollars in debt. I don’t think that was racked up in the last
18 months, so the point is, he inherited the worst governed state in the
nation. The state with the largest
financial crisis, the worst rated in terms of credit agency State the Nation,
and he was elected to do the difficult things for structural reform to bring
Illinois back from the precipice of economic collapse. And he’s being met with resistance at every
turn because there are some who benefitted while Illinois has declined and
they’re mainly in AFSCME and SEIU and the Teacher’s Union.
John: Right, and the holy alliance is that AFSCME,
of course, wants better contracts for their members and they take their
political donations and they give it primarily to speaker Madigan and senate
president Cullerton.
Dan: And then we should point out that the Mount
Sterling City Council blinked, they didn’t vote to shut off the water to the
prison. They’re worried about losing
jobs and having prisoners transferred if the facility is not going to be
operable—
John: Right.
Dan: And losing local jobs, and I understand
that. But it shows you what AFSCME’s
willing to do in order to get what they want, and it’s important to talk about
AFSCME because it’s the largest public sector union, representing most the most
amount of state workers, 37,000 state workers.
And it’s also one, in addition to the budget impasse, that has a
collective bargaining impasse with governor Rauner. He has successfully negotiated 18 different
collective bargaining units, with public sector unions who represent smaller
groups of state employees that all have taken a wage freeze because of where
the state finds itself financially, as everybody knows or should know by this
point. And AFSCME wants a 29% increase
over the life of their contract because that’s how used to getting their way
they are.
John: And, they’re willing to use prisoners as
pawns in this battle. Now, prisoners are
not the most sympathetic audience but think about that, they’re willing to shut
off water to a prison full of people who are living lives, serving their time
for the crime they committed. They’re
just pawns in this fight to them. And it
boggles the mind how far they will go.
Dan: Oh, everybody is a pawn. I mean, we know SEIU and their partners in
crime, as it were, yeah Pam Harris take governor Quinn and the state all the way
to the Supreme Court to get SEIU off the backs of families who have a
development disabled child when SEIU tried to unionize parents against their
children. So the rapaciousness of the
public sector unions is—it seems to me the central problem that governor Rauner
faces, we spend a lot of time and there’s a lot of ink devoted to kind of the
binary Rauner versus Madigan or Rauner versus Cullerton discussions. And that’s easy for a lazy Chicago press
corps and Springfield press corps. But
the real story is these institutional powers that transcend any election cycle,
that transcend the career of any politician, even Mike Madigan, even John
Cullerton. And that’s the public sector
unions.
John: Hey, when we do the last segment today, let’s
discuss the solution to that problem.
Dan: Ok, I think that’s what we call a ‘tease’ in
the business.
Dan: Dan Proft back with John
Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, illinoispolicy.org. And John, one of the component parts of
governor Rauner’s turnaround agenda is a true property tax freeze and, boy,
could we use it. Illinoisans, not just
in Chicago anymore but Illinois in general, pay the highest property taxes in
the nation. And the property taxes are
pushing people out of their homes and out of the state, quite literally. So a bit of a protest, different ways to
protest that and one, get involved in the public policy arena, the other is
kind of illustrate the problem with point. And one person who took a bit of a creative
approach to protesting the skyrocketing property taxes in their community, is
Dan Alword, he’s a McHenry County resident and he joins us now. Dan, thanks for joining us, appreciate it.
Dan
A: Thank you.
Dan: So you went to McHenry County
Treasurer’s Office to pay your property tax bill, and how did you go about
doing that to express your displeasure?
Dan
A: Well, I paid them in
singles. I was going to hand them a
teabag but I forgot the teabag.
Dan: So you paid them in singles
which is, frankly, a lot more generous than paying them in pennies, bringing
in—
John: I was just thinking about that,
you’ll need a semi-truck.
Dan: But—
Dan
A: I estimated the weight of
the pennies and it would be close to 4,000 pounds.
Dan: Ok, that sounds like a
government problem. But how was that
received when you paid them singles?
Dan
A: Unbelievable. I think it has brought out the anger of the
people, so I have received hundreds of support, people supporting what I’ve
done. I appreciate that but I’m not
doing this for me personally, yes I am partially, yes of course, but I’m doing
it for the state of Illinois, for their losing residents which are losing
income tax. They’re losing businesses
because the taxation, the real estate taxes.
And mostly for the citizens, and if you think that you’re renting a
house and you’re not paying real estate taxes, you’re dead wrong.
John: Exactly.
Dan
A: Anybody that knows anything
about business, that’s all calculated in your rent. So when they increase the real-estate tax,
they’re increasing your rent.
John: Right, and I think you made a
very good point, every time the tax payer leaves the state, Dan, they take the
tax revenue with them off their income and in Illinois we have the highest per
household taxes paid of the Midwest, a little over fifty-one, fifty-two hundred
dollars. So every time you get into a
situation where people’s property taxes start to cost more than their mortgage,
which is the ultimate version of being under water, and people abandon ship and
go elsewhere, the property tax base declines.
And obviously, all the other taxes that flowed decline, and we’re accelerating,
unfortunately. When we first started
tracking net out migration, the rate a which people leave, there’s one person
every eleven minutes, now we’re having people leave every five minutes.
Dan
A: Ok, that’s doubled since the
last time I checked it. And my figure
might have been a year or two ago because at that time it was one every ten
minutes, and I predict that next year, because of these hikes, because they’re
not going to stop unless we stop them.
If we stick together we will win—
Dan: Ha.
Dan
A: We have to stick together. It will double next year and businesses are
also leaving.
John: Yeah.
Dan: How long have you been in
McHenry County, Dan?
Dan
A: We moved here in 1957,
however, it was my grandmother’s property.
It was a summer home and it was built by her brother, my great uncle in
1911.
Dan: Wow. So you like see your family settled McHenry
County basically.
Dan
A: Well, my great uncle built
it, it was designed as a replica of a castle in Spain. The chandelier and the gates coming into the
living room are out of that Spanish castle, he did it on a smaller scale. This is just a summer home.
Dan: So you’ve been there for almost
60 years, just even in the last 10 or 15 years, what are the changes you’ve
noticed in your community?
Dan
A: Well, it’s grown a lot, when
we first came here there was 2,500 population, now there’s 25,000. The amount of people that are leaving that’s
going to decrease, what they don’t understand is by raising the property values
assessments, they’re depreciating property value.
John: Exactly.
Dan
A: So, if a person looks at a
house such as mine, they have it assessed at $399,000. Ok, when somebody comes to buy this house,
they’re going to look at the house, they’re also going to calculate how that
comes out with the real-estate taxes, it’s going to be about twelve, thirteen
hundred dollars a month in just property taxes—
Dan: Right.
Dan
A: When you calculate that into
the payment they’re not going to buy it.
Dan: Yeah, because you’re going to
pay for your house twice, or almost twice with a 30-year mortgage, then you’re
going to pay at least half a time, if not full time, just on property taxes and
what kind of investment is that?
John: Right.
Dan
A: I’ll tell you, honestly, I thought of selling it and I had a real-estate agent come out and I told her, I
said, “This is the worst investment I have ever made in my entire life.” And she looked at me kind of funny and she
said, “How could you say that?” And I
says, “Because I have paid over $200,000 since I bought the house in ‘84 from
my mother, in real-estate taxes. I’ve
put in about $60,000 in improvements which raised the value of the house, which
I had to pay more taxes on.” Yeah, it’s
a Catch 22, you can’t win.
Dan: Yeah.
Dan
A: So when it gets to a point
where I can’t afford the taxes anymore, I’m going to leave the state.
Dan: Well, Dan Alword, McHenry County
resident, we appreciate your example of peaceful protest underscore serious
issue. Appreciate you joining us, thank
you.
Dan
A: I thank you for your
interest and thank the people of Illinois for their support.
Dan: Thanks, Dan, and that could
almost be Illinois’ slogan; Come to Illinois, make the worst investment of your
life.
John: [Laughing].
Dan: Dan Proft back with John Tillman, CEO of the
Illinois Policy Institute. John, you’re
a keen observer of what’s happening in Springfield, as we are nearing the end
of the fiscal year without a budget, even a stopgap budget, without funding for
K through 12 education. And so the
concern about if many schools will be able to open on time if that does not
come to past. How do you see this
shaking out between the governor and the general assembly?
John: So what’s happened so far is, the leaders and
the governor have all spoken over a period of time and essentially it’s gotten
down to a simple thing; a six-month budget that the governor’s proposed through
his partners in the house and senate; Leader Radogno and Leader Durkin. And six-month stopgap budget to get through
the election so that then they can put a grand bargain back on the table. They’ve essentially solved all the problem
but one issue. So full funding of the
schools, no cuts schools, every school’s made whole, schools will open on
time. Social services are fully funded,
some key things for the democrats are fully funded in terms of the social
service areas that the republicans also agree with, except for one thing, Dan. There’s one thing sitting out
there, which is that the democrats would like to avoid out with Chicago
democrat taxpayers. They want the people
in Mundelein or McHenry, DuPage County and around the state to bail out the 207
million dollars Chicago public schools’ complete mismanagement for decades.
Dan: Yeah.
John: That’s the holding up, that’s what’s being
held up.
Dan: Well as a Chicago property taxpayer I’m
incline to be supportive of that, if I weren’t so principled.
John: Right.
Thank God for your principles, Dan.
Dan: Yeah, because my 13% property tax increase
that’s going to compound with additional 13 to 20% increases for the
foreseeable future I anticipate in Chicago, are no fun. But the results of decades and decades and
decades of mismanagement the Chicago didn’t go bankrupt overnight—
John: Right.
Dan: It happened gradually, now suddenly they
don’t have any answers except other people’s money outside the corporate
boundaries.
John: Right.
Dan: And governor Rauner said a couple of things
very clearly, and he said them before the Crane’s Editorial Board this week,
that’s the business journal for people who hate business, “No, I’m not doing a
tax increase without structural reform, I’m not signing unbalanced budget,
constitutionally I’m—”
John: He actually takes that provision seriously.
Dan: Yeah.
“I’m not going to do it. And
also, not bailing out Chicago, the bankruptcy is a better option. It doesn’t have to be a bad word, it’s an
opportunity to reorganize.”
John: Right.
And I think that he has nailed it exactly right and I think the other
thing that’s happening is that the sort of a narrative arc of all of this has
shifted. And I think we are seeing the
pressure now move off of him because he’s right about this, and people
instinctively agree that what you just laid out is how it should be. So now the pressure has moved over to Cullerton
and Madigan for the first time, and there are some behind the scenes things
going on where I think they are feeling pressure like they have not so
far. They have a looming deadline in the
city of Chicago for a bond payment at the end of July and they’re going to have
a hard time making that, unless they decide to bail themselves out.
Dan: Very interesting, and so pressure comes from
a lot of different directions. There’s
the pressure from the electorate, but then there’s the pressure from concentrated
interests. And go back to a conversation
we were having earlier on the show about the public sector unions and how they
really rule the roost. You’ve talked
about—yes Madigan may be the most powerful politician in the state but he’s not
in that position without his public sector union financiers. So how does the governor, how does the Illinois electorate kind of break that unholy alliance?
John: You have to elect reformers, whether you’re a
democrat or a republican you have to decide who you’re going support. Are you going to support somebody that’s
going to go to Springfield—when they’re in your home district they’re going to
lie to your face and tell you that they’re a reformer. And then they’re going to go to Springfield
and do what Mike Madigan tells them, because Mike Madigan puts in their
campaign manager, Mike Madigan puts in the legislative staff, Mike Madigan
decides how your campaign is going to be run and then he funds your
campaign. And so they go down there and
become beholden to Mike Madigan. And
Mike Madigan actually doesn’t care about any of this all he actually cares
about is making money off of the system through property tax appeals which he
does with his law firm representing other real-estate interests, representing
nursing homes. This is how he’s become a
millionaire while being speaker. So what
happens in your life doesn’t really matter so long as he keeps milking that
cow. And so the way people get out of
this is sort of like Dan who we had on earlier, you decide to get engaged and
there’s lots of ways to get engaged, but people have to get engaged and pay
attention to their local state rep and state senate races they got coming up
this fall. Start paying attention to your—not
just your congressman who goes to Washington, who’s the person that represents
you that goes to Springfield. And, Dan,
you’re a political expert and very engaged with these things yourself, as you
know there are differences in people’s points of view on who’s a true reformer
and who’s the fake reformer.
Dan: Yeah—
John: You know the difference.
Dan: The challenge is, and this is a challenge
the republicans have had for some time, that they have not really successfully
managed, is to connect those dots, right?
John: Right.
Dan: Just to make people understand that that
nice person who’s your state rep and you see at the Friday night fish fry, goes
to Springfield and does the bidding of somebody that you say you don’t like,
somebody that you say you don’t want to see their agenda pursued. And then comes back and tells you how
independent and courageous they are, but the record reflects something
else. It’s been very challenging to
connect those dots.
John: Well, I think part of it is we have to do a
better job, those who get involved in politics, and of course, these are my
personal opinions, not those of the Institute.
We have to do a better job in our messaging and communication of
connecting the dots, that this individual who’s great to go to the barbecue
with is actually the guy who’s raising your property taxes. He’s raising your sales taxes, he’s the
reason that your school’s not as good as it could be, he’s the reason that
you’re wondering whether you should send your child to an in state school or
perhaps over the Missouri or Indiana, wherever.
That guy right there, that’s the reason.
So he’s really fun at the barbecue?
Let’s have him around more often by having him not go to Springfield
anymore and replacing him.
Dan: Yeah, right.
And here’s something else too that I think sometimes people forget
because you get use to—and this is the power of the incumbent, you get used to
voting for the same name. Here’s an
idea, contemplate the notion that the current state rep or state senator is not
the only person that can do that job.
John: Right.
Dan: There are many, many people that live in
your neighborhood that could go to Springfield and do as good and probably much
better than some of the people down there now.
And so maybe, maybe, take a page out of our courageous friends in
Britain this week and maybe take a little bit of a step outside your comfort
zone to say, “I’m not comfortable with the status quo and I’m not going to
settle for it anymore, and I’m not just going to give in to hopelessness. I’m going to roll the dice on something maybe
I haven’t done previously, and vote against the guy that I’ve been voting for
all these years.”
Dan: Dan Proft back with John Tillman, CEO of the
Online Policy Institute. So I just
mentioned the Bexit vote, kind of a shock to the global system, particularly
the elites in the global system. Whether
they are in Britain—
John: It’s just a dark day for the elites, Dan—
Dan: Yeah.
John: But people have asserted their authority.
Dan: And it’s funny too because this has been a
long time coming. So the whole
unanticipated decision by Brits to leave the EU was really not that
anticipated. If you were watching and
listening to what people were actually saying, and I’ll go back to Dan Hannon,
who’s brilliant, brilliant guy, a member European Parliament and happy not to
be anymore. Or soon not to be because—
John: How unusual is that alone, right?
Dan: Right, right. He was happy to be relieved of his title, he
was on the ‘leave’ side, this is a speech he gave where he dressed down then
prime minister Gordon Brown, in 2009 in Brussels.Audio Clip:
You cannot spend your way out of recession
or borrow your way out of debt. And when
you repeat in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better
than others, that we are well placed to weather the storm, I have to tell you
you sound like a Brezhnev era operatic, giving the party line. You know and we know, and you know that we
know that it’s nonsense. Everyone knows
that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard
times. The IMF has said so, the European
Commission has said so, the markets have said so, which is why our currency has
devalued by 30% and soon the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already
seen, the you are the devalued prime minister of a devalued government.
John: Holy cow, I’ve not heard that—
Dan: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
John: That is amazing. The
political truth certainly, wow.
Dan: Hannon drops the hammer as only he can, but
there are others, there are others who are essentially saying the same
thing. When I came to the tax side and
the world government side, when it came to the kind of open borders matters—
John: Destruction of our culture?
Dan: Yeah, the idea that—it seems to me the idea
that sovereignty means something, the integrity of our country, our borders for
the purpose of economic security as well as physical security. And that’s something that frankly is an
issue, not just in country, it’s also an issue in the city of Chicago and the
state of Illinois, the idea of kind of the sovereignty of a city government and
the first responsibility of this city government in Chicago to provide for the
physical security of its residents, which it does not do.
John: Right.
Dan: And, obviously, the fiscal matters at the
state level that we talk about routinely.
John: Exactly.
There are three things that essentially have to happen in society to
have a civil society—more than three but three core things. You just touched on one, physical security,
economic opportunity that you can be prosperous in your own life and control
your own economic destiny and then, education as a proxy for a chance to rise,
the opportunity. And in the city of
Chicago we’re failing on all three and the people of Britain just voted the way
they did because they felt that the huge regulatory yoke of Europe was
squeezing them in every one of those areas.
I just happened to be in London a couple of weeks ago and this was the
issue of the—
Dan: Sure.
John: It dominated every conversation, and
Dan: Seventy-two percent turnout, though, highest
turnout for a national election in 25 years.
John: It was amazing and what I think—I think
‘exit’ was up five points the time I was there so it’s tightened a little bit
since then in the final result here. But
I think it’s interesting about the discussion then, was—I know this is going to
shock you, Dan, I was with a bunch of intellectuals—
Dan: Yeah.
John: They let me in anyway, I was mostly waiting
tables, but it was interesting that what we been calling libertarians or
conservatarians over there, kind of called liberals in the classic liberal
sense or conservatives. But there was a
mixed view of this, there wasn’t consensus, some people—even on the right, as
we would call it, were scared to vote for the exit and they thought there would
be carnage. I think this is one of the
greatest things ever, because when you tear down a wall you have to chip away
at the mortar to get the brick out. You
don’t just attack the wall, you chip away at the mortar, this is a big chunk of
mortar coming out for the world.
Dan: You know what’s all very also interesting
about it and it’s instructive here locally in Chicago and Illinois, is it was
led by seniors. Young people
overwhelmingly voted to remain and it was 50 plus that voted overwhelmingly to
leave. So the idea of the people who,
frankly, voted for, supported entrance into the EU some two decades ago, two
decades later come full circle and—
John: Do over.
Dan: Well, they grew up, and they learned a
lesson and they essentially said, I think a lot of them—and this is labor types
as well as conservative types, are saying, “This may be the last chance to
retain the Britain that I know.” And,
boy, isn’t that the conversation we’re having in Chicago and Illinios.